1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to musical instruments and, in particular, to techniques suitable for use in portable device hosted implementations of musical instruments for capture and rendering of musical performances with game-play features.
2. Related Art
The installed base of mobile phones and other handheld compute devices grows in sheer number and computational power each day. Hyper-ubiquitous and deeply entrenched in the lifestyles of people around the world, they transcend nearly every cultural and economic barrier. Computationally, the mobile phones of today offer speed and storage capabilities comparable to desktop computers from less than ten years ago, rendering them surprisingly suitable for real-time sound synthesis and other digital signal processing. Indeed, modern mobile phones and handheld compute devices, including iOS™ devices such as the iPhone™, iPod Touch™ and iPad™ digital devices available from Apple Inc. as well as competitive devices that run the Android operating system, tend to support audio (and indeed video) playback and processing quite capably. In addition, multi-touch user interface frameworks provided in such devices create new opportunities for human machine interactions.
These capabilities (including processor, memory and I/O facilities suitable for real-time digital signal processing, hardware and software CODECs, audiovisual and touch screen APIs, etc.) have contributed to vibrant application and developer ecosystems. Examples from the synthetic musical instrument application space include the popular Ocarina, Magic Piano™ and Magic Guitar social music apps, the innovative Magic Fiddle app, pitch-correcting vocal capture apps such Sing!, Glee Karaoke, and I Am™ T-Pain, all from Smule, Inc. As synthetic musical instruments designs develop and mature, innovative techniques are needed to simulate, extend and, indeed, improve upon musician-instrument interactions that, while familiar from the physical world, present challenges for implementations of synthetic instruments on general purpose hardware such as the ubiquitous mobile phones and handheld compute devices discussed above. Likewise, innovative digital synthetic instrument designs are needed to tap the potential of engaging social, interactive, and even game-play experiences.